After two weeks of intense controversy, and just one day before the release of his book that began all the fuss, author and pastor Rob Bell denied emphatically that he was a universalist.
Two weeks ago, Bell became a twitter trend in the same league as the Oscar winners, because a few well-known pastors and theologians strongly disagreed with some of the points made in his latest book regarding heaven and hell. They argued that Bell's conclusions in the book made him both a universalist and heretic (although a few of them admitted to not having read the book first). Their comments exploded into the blogosphere causing a heated debate among Christians all over the world.
Bell was given a chance to respond to these criticisms and talk about his book 'Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived' at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The event drew hundreds to the venue and a further 6,000 on the internet. The evening began when Bell was directly asked by Newsweek’s Lisa Miller, “Are you a universalist?”
"No, if by universalist we mean there's a giant cosmic arm that swoops everybody in at some point whether you want to be there or not," replied Bell.
"That violates the laws of love and love is about freedom, it's about choice, it's about do you want to be there? Because that's what would make it heaven."
Bell emphasised that he wasn't a theologian, and he didn't offer any scholarly arguments on the always difficult subjects of heaven and hell and the exclusivity of Jesus Christ. Rather, Bell insisted he was just "one more voice" in an ongoing conversation about things that matter most.
"I never set out to be controversial," said the pastor who has been accused of moving away from traditional Christianity.
"I don't think that God honors it when people set out to be shocking, or dangerous or provocative," he added.
"My interest is in what's true and where is the life and where is the heart and what inspires. And if that happens to stir up a few things, that's something I accept."
Bell was also directly questioned on whether he believed there was a hell.
"Is there hell? If not, does that take anything away from the cross?" he was asked.
"I actually think there is hell because we see hell every day," Bell responded.
"Greed, injustice rape, abuse, we see hell on earth all around us all the time ... And we actually see lots of people choosing hell. We see oppression, we see tyranny, we see dictators using their power to eliminate the opposition, literally.
"The essence of grace is Jesus saying 'left to your own, we are all in deep trouble; we have made a mess of this place; we are all sinners; no one has clean hands.' The essence of his gospel was 'trust me, I'll take care of it."
While Bell admitted that Jesus was "unbelievably exclusive," pointing out statements like "I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me," he also said Jesus was “fantastically inclusive," pointing to other statements Jesus made such as "I, if I am lifted up, ... will draw all people to myself" and there will be a "renewal of all things."
"He's like inexclusive," Bell smiled.
"I think what happens is, especially for followers of Jesus, is there are sort of his exclusive claims that are often at the expense of the other things that he says ... be careful because I'm doing something for everybody," Bell explained. "How exactly that pans out, that's God's job."
One theologian in the crowd, Dr. Ronald C. Walborn, dean of Alliance Theological Seminary in New York, again asked Bell directly about his beliefs in an eternal hell.
"Do you believe, first of all, that hell is a real place or just on earth? And if we do de-emphasize the doctrine of hell, what does that do to the motivation for Christian mission?" Walborn queried.
Once more, Bell responded by talking about the hell people create for themselves on earth.
"It's crucial that ... we come face to face with the power of our choices. We can choose the way of compassion, of forgiveness, of generosity or we can choose other paths and those have real consequences in the world," the author said.
The Great Commission, Bell added, is about announcing the good news and proclaiming God's love and "rescue effort."
"At our church, we talk about the good news is better than that, that there is a story ... and Jesus invites us into the story and to share that story with others. The real challenge for Christians when it comes to witnessing, evangelism is 'do you actually think this is a great story?'"
The pastor from Michigan honestly expressed his struggles with the concept that only a select few would make it to heaven and that billions of people would burn forever in hell.
Bell noted that the normal way most were told about Jesus, was something along the lines of "God loves you, God has a wonderful plan for your life, He loves you so much that he sent Jesus because God wants a relationship with you. All you have to do is accept, trust, believe."
"If tonight, you reject what I'm saying to you and you were hit by a car on the way home, God would have no choice but to punish you eternally with torment and fire in hell. God would, in that split second, become a totally different being," he said.
"If there was an earthly father who was like that – this one moment, this the next – we would call the authorities, correct?
"My experience as a pastor is lots of people have really toxic, dangerous, psychologically devastating images of God in their head, images of a God who's not good.
"In some sense, God being good is such a fresh, radical, new idea."
Christians, Bell argued, need to return to sharing about God's love.
"I believe there are moments when we have to return to our roots and we have to acknowledge that perhaps in some ways we've lost the plot along the way and that we need to return to the simplicity of God is love and God sent Jesus to show us this love that we might know this love, that we might extend this love to others."
Yet "can God be both loving and just?" another audience member asked him.
"Yes," Bell quickly responded.
"There has been this human longing and desire for God to fix the world essentially. ... There has been this longing for justice, for a day [with] God saying 'if you want to do that, out.'"
"You also have this side by side [with] God's endless affirmation; God wants everybody to be saved," he said, citing Psalm 22.
"So you have the possibility of every single person being rescued – you have this longing. And then you have this longing for justice. And they sit side by side. And if you get rid of that tension, the modern mind loves 'it's either this or [that],' ... the Hebrew mind is okay with these things being true."
Bell described how in Revelation there is a description of a restored city, heaven and earth coming together and the dwelling of God being with the people. And there are people who aren't in it, Bell admitted.
Yet, "there's this beautiful thing, it's almost like the writer [saying] ... wink wink, there's a gate in the city and it never shuts."
"It just doesn't get resolved. It sits there. I think it's important that we let it sit there side by side."
Bell also strongly warned against turning speculation about heaven and the afterlife into dogma.
"I think it's very important for people of faith to yes, I believe in heaven; yes, I believe it's real; yes, I believe that it's somehow intermingled with this reality and yet separate in some sense in this reality. How exactly all of that works out, I don't know."
"What I find really fascinating is Jesus turns the whole discussion upside down because he comes from a very first century Jewish worldview and he keeps insisting [that] actually God is interested in restoring and renewing this world," he highlighted. "He speaks of it as sort of a real place and yet it's always heaven and earth becoming one. As opposed to how do we get there, his interest is how do we bring there here?"
New York City was Bell's first stop in the Love Wins book tour. He will visit eight other cities through April.